As Fable III gets set to finally hit PC this month the game’s lead combat designer sat down with Eurogamer to talk about piracy, a large problem according to most multiplatform developers. Lionhead’s Mike West disagrees, calling second-hand sales a larger problem for developers.
"Piracy these days on PC is probably less problematic than second-hand sales on the Xbox. I've been working on PC games for many years and piracy is always a problem. There are a lot of honest people out there as well, and if they like your game they'll buy it,” said West.
"The pirates, whatever you do on whatever system, they will crack it. It might take no time... I think the longest it's taken to happen is two days. Someone will crack it somewhere and there's not much you can do about it.”
"It's just a depressing situation we're in that people don't think it's worth spending money on computer games," he contends. "What they're doing is making sure there are fewer games coming out in the future and more people out of work, which is a terrible thing. Unless you sit down and meet a pirate face to face and have a conversation about what it does, I don't think anything will stop them."
On the bright side, any sales from Fable III’s PC port will be a “bonus” for Lionhead, having already made money back on the Xbox 360 version.
"For us it's probably a no-lose even with piracy as it is. But, as I say, second-hand sales cost us more in the long-run than piracy these days,” sighed West.
Fable III hits stores - and for the first time ever Valve’s Steam service - today.
